


Lovely, Dark, and Deep

by junkyardjeditrash



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Camping, Cryptozoology, Devoted Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, F/M, Hunting, Married Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, One animal dies but it's not graphic, Rough Sex, Sasquatch, romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:55:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29371947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junkyardjeditrash/pseuds/junkyardjeditrash
Summary: Ben and Rey go camping every year to celebrate their love.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 45
Kudos: 40
Collections: 2021 Reylo MonsterLoving Valentines





	Lovely, Dark, and Deep

**Author's Note:**

> [](https://imgbb.com/)   
> 

“Are you serious?” Ben groans as Rey points her camera at him with a cheeky grin. “I thought this was supposed to be a romantic getaway.”

“There’s no reason I can’t shoot a little content for my YouTube channel,” Rey replies. “We’re in sasquatch country, after all. I might as well look around and get some footage if I can.”

“Ah yes. Do encourage the gullible to come traipsing into the woods looking for something they’re certainly not going to find. You know how Poe and Finn love searching for people and calling in the rescue choppers.”

Rey snorts, rolling her eyes. Their friends, Poe and Finn, are rangers in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, and every year they’re stuck searching for lost cryptid enthusiasts who venture into the back country while looking for evidence of sasquatch, assuming every divot in the earth is a footprint, and bagging every bone, chunk of fur, and even dried out feces for examination in their home laboratories. Proof, they all say. Proof of the existence of something that’s neither man nor animal.

“The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,” Rey quips.

“You do know that’s not what the poem is about, right?” Ben snorts.

He’s a literature professor at the UW in Seattle, and he gets fussy about poetry, but Rey is unconcerned. She shrugs and kicks her feet up on the dashboard of their SUV, earning a dark look from her husband.

“It’s still a nice turn of phrase, and besides, the woods _are_ lovely, dark, and deep, and that’s exactly why we’re going on this trip.”

“Oh, I just thought you liked to pee outside.”

Rey points her camera out the window as the thick evergreens roll by as their SUV climbs and climbs into the wooded hills of the forest. Every year for the last ten years, they’ve made the journey to Cyclone Lake to camp and hike and revel in the fresh mountain air of the alpine landscape. It’s where they’d met, long ago, on what they’d assumed would be solitary journeys up the mountain. They’d each emerged from the tree line, exhausted and sweaty after a long day of hiking and hauling gear, and when their eyes had met, magic had sizzled through the air, and they had known immediately.

They were meant to be.

They’d been inseparable ever since, despite their highly different outlooks on life.

“Har dee har har, professor. When’s open mic night at the improv?”

“You go first. I want you to tell me more sasquatch theories. That’s comedy.”

“Ah, well, there’s the theory that sasquatch is simply an extraterrestrial visitor. Sightings are often precipitated by glowing balls of light.”

Ben snorts. “Likely story.”

Rey continues, “Then there’s the theory that sasquatch is a genetic experiment, and the sightings have been of escaped human-ape hybrids. Some say the U.S. government swooped in to remove charred sasquatch remains after the Mt. St. Helens eruption in 1980.”

“Uh oh. Not the gubmint. Has anyone bothered to explain why they would want to create hybrids?”

“Well, no. No one’s sure why that’s a good idea, honestly. There’s one theory that maybe someone fucked a grizzly bear, and voila! Sasquatch,” Rey says, waving her hands for emphasis.

That one earns a grimace, and Ben steers the SUV off the main road, following brown national park signage towards the ranger station. So far from the fray of city life, their bustling Madrona neighborhood, her job at his father’s auto repair shop, the crowds of students clamoring for better grades and help revising their essays, the world has turned to trees and more trees and dizzying, grand mountain peaks, at first fuzzy with the carpet of evergreens, then craggy, glaciered peaks towards the top.

And it’s so gloriously quiet.

Rey turns off the radio and rolls down the window, letting in brisk, cool air that they both inhale hungrily, as if they’ve been under water and only here in the ancient forests can they truly breath. With a loud exhalation, they both laugh.

“We’ve gone full granola, haven’t we?” Ben chuckles. “Pure mountain air, metal straws, and beeswax lids instead of Saran wrap.”

“We can’t help it. This is who we are,” Rey admonishes blithely, sitting up straight and pulling her feet off the dash as soon as the ranger station comes into view. “Oh! We’re here! Thank goodness. My last chance to pee in a real toilet before we spend a week beyond the reaches of civilization.”

“Okay, maybe we’re not that granola.”

“Plumbing has its virtues, Benjamin,” Rey snarks.

As soon as Ben parks in the lot beside the ranger station, Rey barrels out and inside the building to greet Poe and Finn and, naturally, leaving Ben to lug their hiking gear out of the SUV and onto the sidewalk. The two rangers follow her outside after a few minutes, grinning and smacking Ben’s arm in greeting.

“You picked a good week to camp. Weather’s looking good, not too rainy, and the summer tourists haven’t started piling onto the trails and insisting on getting lost in the back country yet. You should have Cyclone Lake to yourselves,” Poe says, writing up a parking tag for their SUV.

“We’ve had some reports of bear sightings around the lake. We know you know the safety protocols, hang up your food, and all that,” Finn adds, holding out a flare gun to Rey. “But still take this, just in case. Bears. Wolves. You never know.”

Rey grins and tucks the flare gun into her hiking pack. “I think we’ll be alright as long as Ben doesn’t go full Thoreau on me. I might have to leave him on the mountainside for that.”

“How dare,” Ben mutters good-naturedly, picking up Rey’s pack and letting her slip her arms through the straps.

She quickly turns and does the same for him, hoisting the bag easily despite its size.

“Damn, Rey! Working out?” Poe teases.

Rey flexes playfully, showing off her perfectly sculpted biceps and triceps. “Just naturally swole, I suppose.”

After a few minutes of easy banter, Rey and Ben hug their friends heartily and set out on their way.

+++

“And over here, we have massive sword ferns, like something out of Jurassic Park,” Rey stage whispers, holding up her camera. “The foliage is dense, and any number of creatures could easily hide here.”

She whips around, pointing the camera at Ben. “Including this sasquatch!”

Ben sighs and rubs his face across his brow in an exaggerated show of annoyance. “Don’t you think there’s enough scientific misinformation in the world?”

“Ben’s what we in the cryptozoology field call a ‘non-believer,’” Rey says into the camera, holding it in front of herself. “But surely we’ll find enough evidence to turn even his skeptical mind.”

With that, she clicks off the camera and pouts. “You could be a little more helpful.”

“I just don’t think we’re doing people any favors by talking about traveling balls of light, sasquatch mating calls and fur coloration, genetic experiments gone wrong, and government conspiracies.”

“So you are listening when I talk to you!” Rey exclaims delightedly, shoving her camera back into the deep side pocket of her pants.

“Because you’re always talking,” he snarks affectionately. “I’m basically hostage to whatever pops into your head at any given moment.”

“And you love it,” Rey says with a winning smile.

“And I love it,” he agrees, his eyes warm as he glances back at her.

Ben had proposed quickly after they met, and Rey had careened into his life like a joyful grenade. Messy, loud, happy, and eager to reinvent the world with her own joyous perspective, despite the early hardships of her life.

After hiking through the abandoned logging road for three miles, they reach a steeper part of the trail and begin their ascent. From the ranger station to the lake, it’s an arduous seven-mile hike, and four miles of it are all uphill with more than a fair share of tough spots. Rey and Ben are sure-footed as they climb, taking their time to make sure their feet are stable on rocky outcroppings, and moving easily despite their heavy packs. They’re old hands at this hiking business.

It’s only after the second ridge that they see the glorious vista of Snowking Mountain, dotted with shimmering blue glacial lakes. And eventually, following that ridge, they finally make it to Cyclone Lake, breathing hard, sweaty and grimy.

“Home sweet home,” Rey says, her face lighting up.

No place felt more like home for them than this jewel-like lake and the rugged alpine landscape and evergreens. The ever-changing sameness of nature ripples over them both. No day is the same out in these mountains. Each day may march toward another season, but even so, mountains don’t move. Lakes don’t relocate. Trees don’t suddenly uproot. The natural tension between now and then and now and the future contains a healing magic that heals the soul after the disconnect of life in the city. The same and always different.

Ben and Rey grin at each other before hurrying to their favorite camping spot to dump their packs and stretch and groan.

They work steadily and silently, setting up their tent and staking it securely to the ground, securing their food supply out of reach of curious and hungry and snackish bears, placing their solar lanterns in key locations, and sorting out the firepit where they’d cook their meals. When dusk begins to fall, Ben starts the fire.

“I feel like I haven’t really breathed since we were here last year,” Ben admits as he sets up the kindling just so, arranging the larger pieces of wood Rey had scavenged, then filling in with smaller pieces, kindling, and so on.

Rey watches him work, amused by his precise campfire build. Ben had been a Boy Scout, once upon a time, then followed his hippie uncle on many camping and backcountry excursions as a teenager. Friends in Seattle had once scoffed when Ben tried to troubleshoot their beachfront bonfire at Golden Gardens, but Rey had informed them of his Eagle Scout status, and he soon had flames licking into the summer night sky, silencing all doubters. Only Ben could be so meticulous and nerdy while building a fire.

“I keep telling you. We need to come more often. It’s good for us to be here. You know your dad will give me as many days off as I want. I’m his favorite daughter-in-law.”

“You’re his only daughter-in-law,” Ben says with a smile. “And I teach during the week. And you know I hate coming here on the weekends when we’re likely to run into other people. I prefer having you and the lake all to myself.”

“Maybe it’s time you took a sabbatical from teaching. You’ve been wanting to write that book.”

Rey bustles about, opening a tin of beans to heat over the fire in a campfire pan and some bread and deli meat that is still cold but needs to be eaten sooner rather than later.

“True. And I’ll never get the research done if I’m teaching a heavy course load,” he replies, pursing his plush lips in consideration as he strikes the flint, igniting their campfire.

It flames to life quickly after Ben gently blows into the wood build, and then he stands back to admire his handiwork. From the way his chest puffs and he crosses his arms, Rey can tell he’s rather pleased with himself. Once a scout, always a scout.

“What’s the point of having tenure if you don’t take advantage of it every now and again?” Rey asks with a smile as they sit on a log near the campfire.

Rey stirs the beans in the campfire pan with a long metal spoon, and for a long moment they sit and listen to the crackle of the fire as the sky darkens, the evergreens turning into spiky silhouettes all around them, and the glacial lake turning from glittering sapphire to inky black.

“You’re right. I’ll talk to the Department Head when we get back. But that’s enough work talk. We’re here to relax and get in touch with nature.”

“Your mom was telling me she and Han used to hike in the Cascades all the time when they were younger.”

“Yeah, family tradition. We like to stick to our home territory. It’s a shame she and Dad can’t manage it anymore. The elevation is hell on their knees.”

“That’s why it’s so important we come up here now. There will come a day when we can’t…” Rey shakes her head ruefully. “I already miss it the other 51 weeks of the year.”

The beans start to sizzle in the pan, and Rey pulls it off the campfire quickly, pouring beans into each of their little bowls. She nestles into her husband’s side, enjoying his warmth and his size, and as they eat, he slips a strong arm around her waist. They breathe in that crisp, healing air, and when their eyes meet, they feel the power of their bond, forged ten years before, as pure and true as anything found in nature.

+++

Ben groans as he stands up, asking with a sidelong glance at his wife, “Did you pack all the cans of food in my backpack?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny,” she replies blithely, collecting their dirty bowls and forks.

“Well, I’m gonna go stretch out my legs and back a bit, do a little stargazing.”

“Don’t go too far. I’ll join you as soon as I’m done.”

Ben gives her a swift kiss on the cheek and a hearty squeeze to her backside. She laughs and shoves him away with one hand. “Plenty of time for that later, Professor.”

After Ben ambles away, Rey takes the dishes toward the lake to give them a rinse before securing them for the night with the rest of their gear. She lingers around the tents, eyes traveling over their campsite for any items that might attract the mountain’s more curious creatures, before looking skyward at the twinkling stars overhead. In the city, she can scarcely tell there are stars, even when there isn’t the usual gloom of clouds. But tonight, it’s clear and brisk, and each star glitters and pulses like a white jewel on black velvet.

Rey savors the wealth of the moment, until she realizes all is silent. More than silent. No cricket chirps. No scurrying of eager squirrels, hoary marmots, or fiendishly animated chipmunks. Even the breeze doesn’t seem to stir the branches of the evergreens dotting the serene lake.

That same stillness overcomes her, as the noise of her heartbeat and the whispered thoughts in her brain die down to nothingness. A flickering pull awakens slowly in her mind, as if a candle’s flame licks upward, then begins to show her the way. Rey doesn’t realize when her feet start moving. She’s drawn slowly into the waiting forest, fingertips brushing over the dense, giant ferns, dodging the devil’s club, further and further into the shadows.

She journeys on silent feet for five minutes or five hours or five years until darkness is all she knows and sees. Rey is only vaguely aware of the cold when she finds herself in a clearing, staring at a figure from behind. It’s taller than tall. Perhaps eight feet. Broad-shouldered with a strong, muscular back. Round solid buttocks. Covered with fur. In the dark, she can’t tell the color, but she can see the shaggy fur, the heavy genitals, the ovoid head, and as it turns, amber eyes that glow with the preternatural energy of an ancient predator.

The moon rises higher, portentously swollen as she stands, momentarily transfixed by the surreal and dangerous and intoxicating power of the creature before her. But as the moonlight brightens, making shadows deeper, it casts the creature into stark relief. Dark, dark fur. Wide, red mouth with fangs. And those eyes. Eyes she knows.

Suddenly she can think again. Suddenly her heart beats. Suddenly she breathes.

And Rey laughs.

“Ben! I thought you were going to wait for me! And you say I’m impatient,” she teases, putting her hands on her hips, looking up at her transfigured husband.

Ben says nothing, he can’t in this form, but she feels the pulse of his heart within her own chest and the power of his thoughts and urges washing over her mind. His soul is the flicker and flame, connecting spiritually with her across space and time, and when her mate calls, she is beholden to him.

He lumbers near on his long legs, his gait so ungainly in this form, and he places a heavy paw on her shoulder in greeting. In the moonlight now, she can see his cast-off clothes, folded tidily only a rock, and after kissing a kiss to his fuzzy knuckles, she quickly begins to tug at her own clothing, leaving it in a messy pile next to his.

Naked before him, she reaches for her husband’s hands, and he clutches them in massive, meaty paws. She looks up at him tenderly, and as the moonlight washes over her pale smooth skin, the transformation begins.

At first, it’s a tingle along her spine and long bones, but it quickly deepens into pain as she stretches taller and wider. Bones groan and click, tendons stretch to the point of snapping, but her body somehow holds together. Rey throws back her head, feeling the mysterious wave of heat sizzle into every sinew of her changing body, her muscles struggling to keep up with her lengthening skeleton. Ben holds tight to her hands as she gasps at the pins-and-needles sensation of the chestnut hair growing longer and shaggier all over her body, until her pelt shines thick and lustrous in the moonlight.

Rey is breathing hard, clutching Ben’s thickened, fur-covered hands. The transformations are always hard on her, but with Ben here, it hurts so much less than it used to when she was alone in the world. He’d had family to guide him through the first time he transformed, but Rey had been solitary, wandering for hours on foot, not understanding the call of the trees and mountains, scarcely remembering what had happened until she awoke days later in impossibly stretched and shredded clothes at the edge of a state park. She’d learned to listen to the call over the years, following her instincts to isolate under the shelter of the evergreens, and slowly learning to retain her memories of these times.

And then she’d met Ben.

_Are you ready?_

_Yes._

He cups her furry face with his paw, and a curling of his lips, an almost human-like smile shows a full set of sharp teeth.

_Follow me._

And quicker than any creature his size has a right to be, Ben turns and lopes off into the dark forest. The gait is strange, somewhere between man and ape, but sure-footed. Rey tears off after him, her eyes trained on his back as she swings her long, heavy arms to help propel herself faster. In this form, they can see in the dark, the nuances of an alpine forest at night as apparent to them as to their human vision in the light of day.

They race through thick flora, ducking under low branches, pushing their bodies to the limit. And when they startle a sleeping deer in its thicket, they set upon it in sudden violence, rending the flesh from its body in shreds and chunks. As they feast upon the warm meat of their quarry, they communicate in guttural grunts of pleasure.

_God, I missed this._

_Me, too._

+++

Ben and Rey lap at the cooling blood, and as they sit back on their haunches, fur streaked with the remnants of their dinner, their eyes meet. Rey feels a thrum of pleasure in her chest and knows the sensation is mirrored in Ben’s. She rises to stretch her legs, enjoying the coppery taste of blood in her mouth and the fullness of her belly after their meal.

But Ben’s arm lashes out, grabbing her around a muscular thigh and jerks her back into him with a sound somewhat softer than a snarl, but just as purposeful.

_Still hungry?_

_Always._

The mating is always feral after a kill. There’s the tang of blood in their mouths and in the air, the rush of adrenaline from subduing and devouring the doe, and the inborn need to revel in their natural dominance as apex predators. Ben knots his thick fingers into Rey’s fur, and she hisses and snaps as he hauls her onto the ground in front of him.

It’s a good hurt. She whips around, swatting at his chest with her claws out; the female of their kind always have sharper claws to make up for their slightly smaller size. Ben still looms more than half a foot taller, even in this form. With a quick movement, he falls upon her, kneading her breasts, small and soft under all that fur, and giving her nipples a wicked pinch that makes her grunt.

Rey feels the zip of anticipation run through every nerve ending in her body, and she tugs at his mind with her own until they’re both shaking with need.

Their pants mingle, and she sinks her fangs into the meat of his shoulder, making him bellow in response. His thick fingers seek between her legs, stroking through fur until he finds her core, wet and waiting for him.

_Gonna fuck you. Right here._

He slides two enormous fingers into her cunt, pumping roughly as she splays her thighs open wide eager, even as she bares her fangs at him viciously. She’s already dripping with arousal, the fur of her thighs and mound darkly damp, the musk of her sex permeating the air and making his fur stand on end, he’s so aroused. Her cunt is tight and squeezes around his fingers, making a squelching noise as he works her until she’s soft and ready for him.

Ben’s glowing eyes meet her own as he withdraws his fingers and reaches to stroke his increasingly prominent erection. His groin is as heavily furred as the rest of him, his balls hanging heavy between his legs, almost obscured by his copious body hair. His cock, previously nestled securely within the nest of fur, grows longer and thicker, proportionate to his altered form, and strangely hairless compared to the rest of him.

He makes a strangled noise as Rey rubs furiously at her swollen clitoris, groaning and panting with need, watching her husband with hungry, yellow eyes as he readies his cock. When he’s achingly hard, his big fist barely able to fit around the shaft, he grunts at Rey until she rolls over onto her hands and knees, presenting herself to him.

Ben hunches over her, gripping the fur at the back of her head in his fist while lining his cock up at the dripping opening of her cunt. Rey hisses, and Ben rams home, burying his entire length inside her with one beastly thrust.

_Fuck_. _Good_.

And both are lost. Ben twists his hand in her fur, slamming his hips into her ass again and again while she grunts from the impact, her slightly smaller form jerking with every thrust. Ben roars into the moonlight as he feels the clench of her inner muscles dragging along his massive cock, making it hard for him to drive into her. He holds her tighter, pumping harder, grabbing her hips brutally with a hoarse growl.

_Just like that. So close._

Rey screams out with roar that’s neither panther, nor bear, nor wolf, as one more fierce slam of his cock sends her over the edge, and she shudders and convulses with raw pleasure. Ben throws his head back and thrusts wildly, his sense of reality altering briefly, his vision blurring in the darkness as he comes violently, spilling hot cum inside his wife’s cunt. He gasps and roars again as he collapses over her, knocking them both panting onto the forest floor.

_Perfect._

_My love._

+++

Ben spoons tenderly around Rey’s body in their little camping tent, warm even after they’ve rinsed the dirt and blood off their human bodies in the brutally cold glacial lake. Rey had felt ice chips in her blood as she’d scampered naked and giggling back to their tent with Ben chasing after her. He’d pulled her under the blankets, dotting her face with playful kisses.

“Oh, forgot to tell you. I’ve got another conference to attend as an expert,” Rey says with mischief.

Ben rolls his eyes so hard she can feel it, and she grins.

“I really don’t know what you get out of all of this.”

“I like to make sure people aren’t getting too close to the truth.”

“Do you really think anyone’s going to take the cryptozoology crowd seriously?”

She snorts. “No, but it’s my duty to make sure they never do.”

“Okay. Hit me with just one more sasquatch theory, and then I’ve gotta sleep. I want to do a little climbing tomorrow at sunrise.”

Rey wriggles her backside against his groin comfortably.

“Did you know the reason no one’s ever found a sasquatch is because they are ‘Special Forces good at hidin’’? And that’s because they pass down their hiding skills from generation to generation?”

Ben considers this for a moment, wrapping his arm around her. “Well. That one’s not _entirely_ wrong.”

Rey hums for a second, thinking of their little ones, safe at home with Han and Leia.

“No, it’s not.”

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. We’ll teach them everything we know,” Ben says soothingly.

Rey takes Ben’s hand in her own, and like she always does, she holds it over her heart as she falls asleep, listening to the gentle murmur of the mountain breeze beyond their cozy tent.

**Author's Note:**

> And that's why we never found bigfoot or sasquatch, kids. They are were-squatches. 
> 
> Also, if there's anything that you feel should be tagged, please let me know. I'm more than happy to make tag updates. I really wasn't sure with this one.
> 
> [JunkyardJediTrash on Twitter](https://twitter.com/junkyard_jedi)


End file.
